25 Apr 2009

X-O-Dus will have a CD out on Ozit Morpheus Records later this year featuring seven unreleased songs which were to have been included on a Factory album in 1982. The content will be much more representative of what the band were doing at the time than Fac 11 English Black Boys (which will also be included and which itself was recently reissued on the Factory Records box set).

X-O-Dus are also working on new material which they hope to have out pre-Christmas, also on Ozit.

"The Crucial 3-0 is a brand new exhibition of images captured and curated by the prodigious British photographer Kevin Cummins. The collection documents the hugely influential careers of a selection of Liverpool's finest bands spanning the past thirty years."

18 Apr 2009

Updated live plans for A Certain Ratio as their Marseille gig on 28 May has been cancelled. The Lyon gig is shifted a day to fill the gap. Meanwhile a gig at The Deaf Institute in Manchester has been announced along with others in the UK and mainland Europe.

PADCAST #10: RECORD STORE DAY - A Lilypad Sampler With Cath Carroll Part 1

Lilypad's Atomic Theory of the Record Store

"Join us as we listen to a variety of songs from Lilypad's friends and family, and Cath rambles on about counter terror at old record shops of the North. We establish Lilypad's Atomic Theory of The Record Store (with thanks to Flann O’Brien), in order to justify why an online indie label is gate crashing this bricks & mortar event. We are Record Store. The Padcast intro features 'Dag Juhlin Symphony Extravaganza', a tribute to the Man of a Thousand Bands, performed by the UK's Monty."

15 Apr 2009

The school which is celebrating its 25th anniversary will honour AHW by launching the scholarship for a range of music-related courses. Wilson encouraged Spirit Studios owner John Breakell to set up the School of Sound Recording back in 1984. The studios became a regular fixture on the Manchester music scene and Factory funksters Happy Mondays were among the many bands to record and rehearse there.

5 Apr 2009

First details have emerged of the new Kevin Cummins photography book out September 2009:

"In Looking for the Light Through the Pouring Rain, Kevin Cummins brings us THE definitive photographic history of Manchester music from the 1970s onwards. With accompanying essays from Kevin's former colleagues Paul Morley, Stuart Maconie and John Harris, and Gavin Martin's interviews with Johnny Marr, Peter Hook and Mark E Smith, the book is a remarkable record of a city which changed the course of popular culture.

"From the punk explosion of Buzzcocks and Slaughter and The Dogs, through The Smiths, Joy Division and the birth of Factory Records and the resulting Madchester years of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays to the Britpop swagger of Oasis, Kevin Cummins was uniquely placed to witness the anarchic energy of the Manchester pop moment and capture the images which would define these bands and shape generations of teenagers and music fans.

"This is a fascinating portrait of a city and its individuals who, through sheer bloodymindedness, put Manchester onto the world stage, providing us with a soundtrack to our lives. Often humorous, at times touching, only Cummins' photographs are able to take us on this incredible journey over four decades. As Morrissey so memorably sang, 'Oh Manchester... so much to answer for.'"

- back cover blurb.

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Looking for the Light Through the Pouring RainKevin CumminsFaber & Faber400ppHardback30.00 GBPSeptember 2009

Kurd Maverick's version of New Order's Blue Monday is out via all usual outlets on Data Records. Mr Maverick is a German based house music producer who first rose to fame with his remix of Technotronic's Pump Up The Jam.

1 Apr 2009

A reminder that a pair of tickets to the Hacienda 27th Birthday Party @ Sankey's are currently up for grabs. Simply send an email to john@cerysmaticfactory.info by Monday 6 April to be in with a chance of winning.

In the grey days of late 1970s post-punk Manchester, youth culture was a serious affair: every musical performance was measured mostly by the conviction of its delivery. The term 'New Wave' opened up free vistas where acquired skills could once again be exercised after punk's monochrome blur. It could be applied to anything from a James 'Blood' Ulmer record to the latest Throbbing Gristle release, Magazine to Swell Maps. Move outside that terrain into Sun Ra, Parliament, Frank Sinatra and Martin Denny, and your options were suddenly without limit...

Then came Tony Wilson's Factory Club (at the Russell Club in Hulme) offering an open invitation to experiment that was taken up when Ken Hollings, Howard Walmsley, Eddie Sherwood and a few others decided to make some noise to accompany their 16mm silent epic Biting Tongues. A further performance followed a few weeks later, when Colin Seddon and Graham Massey disbanded their Post Natals project and joined up. The film itself, a flashing series of negative images, became a memory; the name remained.